Wisconsin Foodie

>> This week on Wisconsin Foodie... >> We're here at Great Lakes Distillery for our second annual Apple Sauce event. We're calling it a Spirited and Sweet Celebration of Apples. >> Really, when I sat down with Genevieve Weston and Ethan Keller, and we started to talk about the apples, and just the variety, it was awesome. >> I think of the orchard like an art. The trees themselves are sculptures. >> I know cidering has always been part of the farm. I'd like people to feel the way about hard cider the way that they feel about their favorite apple. >> I'm dorking out on cider! >> Wow! We are delivering 100 gallons to New Glarus Brewery. >> The apple people! We love apples! It just smells so good. I think this is going to turn out to be something really fun. >> Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters for their support; Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and the dairy farm families of Wisconsin; Society Insurance, small details, big difference; Outpost Natural Foods Co-Op; Potawatomi Hotel and Casino; Illing Company, creating packaging solutions for you; Fab Wisconsin, the regional food and beverage industry cluster; The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and the dairy farm families of Wisconsin are proud to support Wisconsin Foodie, helping viewers celebrate our state's vibrant food culture. With nearly 11,000 family dairy farms, the Wisconsin dairy industry generates more than $26 billion annually for the Wisconsin economy, and brings recognition to the state for producing award-winning cheeses. >> I've had Society Insurance for my restaurant from the beginning, because I know they understand my business and how it's evolving, and how the industry is evolving. You're going to have the coverage and support you need for your unique operation. >> The Milwaukee region has the highest concentration of jobs in food, beverage and ingredients manufacturing in the nation. From production to processing, right down to our plates, our regional food industry offers career opportunities to fulfill your dreams and feed the world. >> Hi, I'm Jen Ede from "edible Milwaukee" magazine. We're here at Great Lakes Distillery for our second annual Apple Sauce event. We're calling it a Spirited and Sweet Celebration of Apples. It's our way of celebrating the season, and the fall, and getting all of our lovely community partners together, and writers, and readers, and just having a grand old time. >> This celebration of a heritage apple here at Great Lakes Distillery is the perfect culmination of the season. There was a time when all these great varieties of apples just crossed the country from end to end. They had poetic names, they had unique flavors, and they were part of what made this country so special. We're rediscovering those flavor profiles, that true heritage. Why an apple event? Why at this time? >> Well, Kyle, it's autumn. You have to do apple events in the autumn. >> So, as a food writer, when you discovered Weston's, how jazzed were you? I mean that is just... >> Really, when I sat down with Genevieve Weston and Ethan Keller, and we started to talk about the apples, and just the variety, it was awesome. And then, on top of things, to hear how they're being so smart about how they're really seizing the moment and cultivating a new business to keep theirs thriving! >> That's very soft, yeah. >> So, to us, this is all about education, and having people know what antique apples are, what the varieties are, and also that you can make other products with apples. I think, too, some people are very intimidated by canning and they shouldn't be. They're intimidated by making their own pie crust. They shouldn't be. And even that, to me, is part of the education. And I've also made apple jelly from our apple cider, just to prove that you can make apple jelly from something other than a pasteurized mediocre juice. I said it!

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Part of the value-added business is a hard cider business. And that is a piece that we didn't know. So, we connected with another individual, Ethan Keller, and he was the one who got us involved in these events. He's doing double-duty. He's both being the cider maker and also helping us market our product. >> Ethan, you are the hired cider guy, right? >> I am the sidekick, the cider sidekick. >> And this thing just sort of found you because this is an orchard you drove past your whole life. >> I drove past the orchard a hundred times, a thousand times. I lived twenty miles away, growing up. I finally stopped at the Orchard. And I sampled just about every apple I could the first year. And then I came back and said, "Well, hey! Do you guys need some help getting a Facebook page going?" and the next thing you know, I'm pressing cider and making hard cider and she's saying, "Let's do this more often." And I'm like, "Yes, let's do this more often!" >> So, why are these apples precious to you and then why turn them into this elixir? >> I travel around the country as a musician, so I like to travel different places. I like variety. I was attracted to the Orchard mainly because of all the different kinds of the varieties. So, I wanted to make hard cider and single varietal ciders, as well. So, we have a whole bunch of single varietals here that we did from 2013. And we have a bunch that we're going to do from 2014, too. >> And this is a different, distinctive style of apple? Another distinctive style? >> That's correct. >> So, you'd have this whole flavor spectrum going on there. Yeah, but what are we going to drink? >> The first apple that I made that I got from the Orchard, and squeezed, and made the cider with, was Pink Pearl. Yeah. >> Pink Pearl! Whoo! Whoo! Yes! Yes! Now that is a cider, my friend! Right on! >> That's more like it. Oh, that is a lively delicate thing. >> Yeah. >> This is living heritage, and you guys are bringing it back. >> I'm glad that it hasn't gone away because then I can be like 'Johnny Appleseed' of the 21st Century, and help people get back into the apples that they don't ever, ever really see anywhere. >> Only through fermented bottles. Dude, cheers to that! >> Cheers! >> And here's to Weston's and that great heritage! Oldest orchard in the state, right? >> 1901, I think, was when they got the land. >> That's pretty amazing. That's American history. >> Hello, my name is Kenneth Weston. I'm a retired mathematician. I taught for 42 years, and retired to this orchard that my father and grandfather and mother started back in 1936. The orchard has 167 different varieties of apples on it. Most of them are antiques. Some are modern varieties. Most modern varieties have a very similar taste. Some a little more sweet than others, but they border on cardboard. I tell everybody that I think of the orchard as a "work of art". It doesn't interest me to produce apples to sell on open markets, as apples as such. The apples have an extra dimension. Mainly, the history, and also the beauty. Some are not so beautiful on the exterior, but the flavors are. The trees, themselves, are sculptures. The hill, itself, is great beauty. A lot of psychiatrists and psychologists who examined me said, "Baby, you're in the wrong field! You should have been in art. What are you doing in mathematics?" Well, the type of mathematics that I do is art. So, I look at the orchard as really filling some kind of need for expression. Something beyond words. I'm not very good at words.

That's my hope

that people see more in this orchard than just apples on trees. They see nature. My daughter really got very independent as she reached her teen years, and would often rearrange the stands, putting the apples she thought were better than other apples first. She started to take over. But she's been very interested in the selling part for quite a while. >> 2012 was the worst crop of my lifetime. We had two days of frost when the apples were blooming. Then, because it had been a mild winter, we had a lot of scab and we had a lot of insects. And then, we had true drought, where it just simply didn't rain. So, we were in bad shape. In October, we had hail on two different days. The skins were ripe. When the skin of an apple is ripe, it's softer and you could damage it much more easily. So, we lost pretty much everything. But, that inspired Sunny Slope because that made me realize that we needed something, you know,that we could store that we would keep from year-to-year that we could sell. So, in a bad year when we didn't have apples, we had something that was still a Weston product to sell. So, my first choice, 'cause I'm a Weston, was hard cider. So, sometimes you have to go through the bad to get to the good. It was the "Great Depression" that started the orchard, itself. My great grandfather lost his job as an iron worker, couldn't afford the big house he had in Milwaukee, so he swapped the big house for the orchard. Now where my grandmother's personality really started coming in, the second orchard which was planted in the '50s, my grandmother had a deep love of history, and they had already started listening to customers who said already back in the '50s, "Well, this was my favorite apple from my childhood." So, she already started planting them because of customer requests. And that's how they started to choose their varieties. The antiques started coming in. The definition of an antique is any variety that was started before the day of the refrigerator car, which is anywhere between 1936 and 1938. So, really, the whole antique thing is something that we kind of accidentally got into, and then we just expanded. In some ways, there's still a big customer base out there who says, this is an apple from my childhood, or this is an apple from-- You know, my mother says she knew Duchess when she was a child, or you know, my grandmother always made her pies from Wolf Rivers, and always said it was the best apple. I know that cidering has always been part of the farm since the 1950s. And I know that at first, the press was hand-cranked, which was a miserable experience and they couldn't really get any volume. Often, the fruit was harder than the machine, and it would frequently break down. Most of my swearing vocabulary comes from being present while they were pressing. We used to do it on Friday nights, too. Let me tell you, when you're in high school, you do not want to spend your Friday nights making cider. But you have to do it when it's your family. This is the Airlie Red, its original name. It's from Oregon. Airlie was the name of the farmer who created it. It's now called the Hidden Rose. It's a commercial name because it has the pink interior. The other ones we'll be doing is the Caville. It is the most famous Normand apple. It is what they make Calvados out of, which is an apple brandy. >> Which is probably one of the coolest things going on in this State right now, this apple squeezing. Although, I have no credentials as a cider maker besides making it taste good and that Genevieve trusts me to make it with these heirloom apples. That's the approach, is that anybody can do it. You don't have to be a professional. You don't have to be an award-winning person. Everybody likes what they like. Everybody has a different palate. I just take the unique apple and go, here it is, and people can pick whatever flavor they like because there's an abundance of flavors. >> I have my favorite apple. I have my favorite cider. And I'd like people to feel the way about hard cider the way that they feel about their favorite apple. >> There's probably four steps to cider making. What happens is that we turn this hopper on, and it obliterates the apples. Then they come down this chute, and go into this pan right here. When that's full, we fold it up, and then we put another layer on top and do it again. So, we stack up all that apple mush maybe four or five high, and put it over here. Squeeze all the juice down into that pan into that hole. >> This fruity-- The only way I can describe it as is a real fruitiness, that's how you know Calvados. I could tell Calvados in the dark by its smell, by its feel. This is it. If I was rating apple ciders, with 10 being the very best, Stamens and Arkansas Blacks would maybe be like 8.5. This would be the 10, maybe an 11, actually. If you showed this part of the tape to anybody who makes cider, they would go, what the heck?! This is the difference between single varietals and this is why people don't want to do single varietals. Because you do what we're doing right now, which is you're trying to get every bit out. You're fooling around, and this is much more time consuming than what most people do. The whole purpose of pressing cider and making cider for an orchard is that these are apples that would otherwise go to waste or would be sold as seconds at a discounted price. Instead, you make a value-added product. Wow! It's interesting how this is different than the Pink Pearl. This is actually more tart, I think, than the Pink Pearl. Than the Pink Pearl that we pressed on Tuesday. Don't you think it's more tart? >> Oh, yeah! >> Calvados is more golden. This has got layers to it. That's the difference. That's the difference between a true cider apple. A true cider apple, when you taste it, it has all these dimensions. It has depth to it. >> Ooh, dorking out on cider! >> Well, good, good! All right! I've got mine. You've got a gig to go to. You're going to be late again. >> What's happening is we are delivering 100 gallons to New Glarus Brewery. They have an Apple Ale. They're putting us into their Apple Ale, and their advertising that it's Weston's in their Apple Ale. If this could be an ongoing continuous relationship, we'd certainly be appreciative. Whether it's by supplying the cider or by supplying the apples, I'm mean that's something we will hopefully find out today. Let's see, we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, right? So, ten times 12 is 120. Right? Here you see that I'm not a mathematician. I'm a speech-language pathologist. This would be our largest cider delivery, to put it mildly. >> I don't think that I'm going to fit 16 in there. >> Hopefully, it will be

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00. >> There's no way that this cider's going to be unfrozen

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00! >> We are at the Wild Fruit Cave at New Glarus Brewing Company. This is a new cellar, that we built in February of this year, for the purpose of making spontaneous ales, old-fashioned beers, Lambic styles of beer, sour beers. As you can see, we have oak tanks for aging the beer. That's sort of the old-fashioned way of making beer, because wood is porous, and there is microorganisms that live in the wood that give a special, unique flavor to the beer. We're not adding cultured yeast. We're relying on the microorganisms that are coming from the wood and come from the air. So it makes for a wild fermentation. That's why we call it the Wild Fruit Cave. So this is the Brewhouse. This is the hot side of the Brewery. In brewing, there's really, three stages. There's the cooking stage, where you take malts and convert them into a liquid form, and you boil them, and you add the hops. It's a lot like making tea. It's cooking. That's why this has the feel of a kitchen. This is how beer was made before the Industrial Revolution back when brewers were doing things like they had always done on the farms. Then the next stage is the cold process. Skyler is the brewer who pretty much runs the cellar. So, Mike is going to start transferring the hot wart from the brew kettle into the cool ship. Now what is going to happen is he will switch the valves and start filling those. And all of a sudden, there will be a big explosion of steam, which is what we want.

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Next, we're going to let the liquid settle and cool overnight, and then we'll transfer it to oak vats for aging. Then, of course, the last stage would be bottling. >> Hi! The apple people! We love apples! Hi, I'm Dan. Hi, Genevieve, nice to meet you. Hi, Ethan, welcome, welcome! Well, I'm really excited. >> Ta-da! >> Oh, my gosh! >> It's frozen. >> Okay, we'll make it work. And it's starting to thaw, too. >> Yes. This is over 50% Caville, which is a French variety that they make Calvados out of. >> Oh, my gosh! I feel a kinship to farmers. People in the agricultural business kind of have the same obstacles, opportunities, and rhythm of work that we do in a brewery. I very much like dealing with farmers and fruit producers, and it's particularly enjoyable to work with small family-run operations, because they share a similar type of passion as we do. I think there's a lot of blood, sweat, and tears setting right there. So, we have some barrels. We have cognac barrels. We have some -- barrels. We have port barrels. So maybe if we could pick one, we could put it in there, and find a cold corner of the cellar and just let it spontaneously ferment. See what we come up with. Go ahead! Who's going to go first? Are you sure you don't want the...?

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Knowing me, I'd end up with half of it running down the barrel. It just smells so good! I wish you had smell-o-vision! I think this is going to turn out to be something really fun. So it's going to sit here for some months. It's nice, cold winter weather right now, so it will be a slow fermentation. And depending on what happens, hopefully by the spring time, we'll be able to bottle it. I'm very exited by this idea. I spent years trying to find fun apples and it took Wisconsin Foodie to bring us together, so I really appreciate it. >> Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters for their support; Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and the dairy farm families of Wisconsin; Society Insurance, small details, big difference; Outpost Natural Foods Co-Op; Potawatomi Hotel and Casino; Illing Company, creating packaging solutions for you; Fab Wisconsin, the regional food and beverage industry cluster; The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources; WMSE 91.7FM, Frontier Radio. The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and the dairy farm families of Wisconsin are proud to support Wisconsin Foodie, helping viewers celebrate our state's vibrant food culture. With nearly 11,000 family dairy farms, the Wisconsin dairy industry generates more than $26 billion annually for the Wisconsin economy, and brings recognition to the state for producing award-winning cheeses. >> I've had Society Insurance for my restaurant from the beginning, because I know they understand my business and how it's evolving, and how the industry is evolving. You're going to have the coverage and support you need for your unique operation. >> The Milwaukee region has the highest concentration of jobs in food, beverage and ingredients manufacturing in the nation. From production to processing, right down to our plates, our regional food industry offers career opportunities to fulfill your dreams and feed the world. >> We sound like two sick seals! >> This is a book of poems. Do you know about this? That's a painting of the Orchard. She wrote a bunch of poems, and I had them published in here. These are drawings from an artist based upon the poems. And the artist drew exactly what I looked like. I used to dress like this. Same kind of hat. I don't know if I carried buckets like that. We didn't sell one damn copy! >> I'll just take this with me. Is that cool? Apple, apple, apples...